(The Education of the American Citizen by Arthur Twining H...)
The Education of the American Citizen by Arthur Twining Hadley.
This book is a reproduction of the original book published in 1902 and may have some imperfections such as marks or hand-written notes.
Railroad Transportation Microform, Its History and Its Laws
(Railroad Transportation Microform, Its History and Its La...)
Railroad Transportation Microform, Its History and Its Laws by Arthur Twining Hadley.
This book is a reproduction of the original book published in 1885 and may have some imperfections such as marks or hand-written notes.
Arthur Twining Hadley was an American economist and educator. He also was president of Yale University from 1899 to 1921.
Background
Arthur Twining Hadley was born on April 23, 1856, in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. He was the son of James Hadley, professor of Greek in Yale College. On the day of Arthur’s birth, a class of undergraduates who were studying under his father waited in vain for their instructor until a scout, sent forth to reconnoiter, returned grinning and wrote on the blackboard, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. ” Young Hadley grew up naturally into the academic life. His grandfather had been professor of chemistry in the Fairfield (New York) medical college; and his father, a brilliant philologist, taught at Yale from 1845 until his death in 1872. His mother, Anne Loring, was the daughter of Stephen Twining, steward of Yale from 1819 to 1832.
Education
Arthur Twining Hadley was prepared for college at Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven and entered Yale at the age of sixteen, in a class characterized by a member of the faculty as “the smartest and wickedest" that had been known in many a year. His career as an undergraduate evinced the versatility of intellect that was so conspicuous in him throughout his life, giving rise eventually to the campus tradition that he could encounter specialists in any field upon their own ground and send them away discomfited. He took prizes in mathematics, English composition, the classics, astronomy, and public speaking; and graduated in 1876 as valedictorian of his class. His interest in debating, which began as a member of the class debating team, persisted all his life, and during the five years that preceded his election to the presidency he found time to coach the teams that met Harvard and Princeton. After graduation he remained for a year at Yale, studying history and political science, and then went abroad to continue these studies for two years at the University of Berlin, where he was a pupil of Adolph Wagner.
Career
In the autumn of 1879 Arthur Hadley joined the faculty of Yale College as tutor. During his four years in this position he gave instruction in Greek, logic, Roman law, and German; and it was not until 1883, when he began his term as instructor in political science, that he was permitted to narrow the range of his teaching and to confine himself to his chosen field. From that time until he was made president he devoted himself to the study and teaching of his specialty, serving as professor of political science in the graduate school (1886-1891), as professor of political economy in the college (1891-1899), and as acting professor of political economy in the Sheffield Scientific School (1890-1891). From 1892 to 1895 he served as dean of the graduate school.
His first book, Railroad Transportation, Its History and Its Laws, was published in 1885.
The chapter entitled “Competition and Combination in Theory” best reveals the power and clarity of Hadley’s thinking. In it he pointed out the fallacy in the theory of Ricardo, that under free competition the value of goods will tend to be proportional to the cost of production. Other economists had observed that this law did not function smoothly in practice; Hadley, going further, declared that in the case of industries with large permanent investments the law was entirely false in theory. “It is not true, ” he said, “that when the price falls below cost of production people always find it for their interest to refuse to produce at a disadvantage. It very often involves worse loss to stop producing than to produce below cost”. This principle is now recognized as a part of fundamental economic theory.
The year of the publication of his first book marked the beginning of Hadley’s public career. In May 1885 he was called as expert witness before the committee of the Senate that drafted the Interstate Commerce Law. In June, he was appointed commissioner of labor statistics of the State of Connecticut, and he continued to hold this office until 1887, publishing two reports that extended his reputation as an economist into the fields of statistics and labor problems. In 1886-1887 he lectured at Harvard on “Problems of Railroad Administration. ” From 1887 to 1889 he was associate editor of the Railroad Gazette, with special charge of the department of foreign railroads. He had already contributed articles on subjects connected with industry to J. J. Lalor’s Cyclopedia of Political Science, and he was called upon for the article on railroads for the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1886) and for the chapter on the railway in its business relations in Scribner’s American Railway (1888). He had charge of the department of economics in MacMillan’s Dictionary of Philosophical Terms (1889) and wrote articles for R. H. I. Palgrave’s Dictionary of Political Economy.
In the midst of activities that were winning him distinction at home and abroad, Hadley continued to discharge his duties as a teacher with unfailing conscientiousness. He always regarded teaching as work of the first importance, giving the best that was in him to his classes, and he speedily established a reputation as one of the most brilliant and stimulating teachers at Yale. His second book, Economics - An Account of the Relations between Private Property and Public Welfare was published in 1896.
On the evening in May 1899 when it became known on the campus that Hadley was to be the next president of Yale, the undergraduates marched to his house to show him their enthusiastic approval.
Audiences on both sides of the Atlantic were given opportunities to hear him, through the lectureships that he held from time to time during his term as president and after his retirement. He gave the Lowell Institute lectures at Boston in 1902, speaking on “The History of Academic Freedom, ” and the Dodge lectures at Yale in the same year on “The Responsibilities of Citizenship. ” In 1906 he delivered the Kennedy lectures on “Standards of Public Morality” before the New York School of Philanthropy. In the following year he was at the University of Berlin as Roosevelt professor of American history, and in 1914 he lectured at Oxford University. As incumbent of the Watson chair in American history he lectured before the Anglo-American Society in London in 1922, and as the first American lecturer on the Watson foundation he delivered lectures on “Economic Problems of Democracy” at London, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Cambridge, and Oxford. In 1924, he addressed the World Power Conference in London and delivered lectures on the West Memorial Foundation at Carnegie Institute of Technology and at Stanford University.
Some of his colleagues on the Yale faculty, taking the view of administrative work commonly held by college teachers, had regretted his election to the presidency. They deplored the termination of his teaching career and were loath to see his time absorbed in duties that would interfere with his progress as an economist. It is true that he met no classes after 1899 and that no more books dealing exclusively with economic matters proceeded from his pen; but in the many audiences that he addressed, he found a new field for his talents as a teacher, and the books and articles he published give evidence that he did not cease to be a scholar when he became president of Yale. His scholarly interests, indeed, seem to have been broadened by his new experiences. The titles of his later volumes are evidence that he no longer thought of himself as an economist addressing students in his field, but as a public teacher with a broader task of instruction to perform. There was little in these later books to attract the attention of the sturdy specialist, but it is probable that they represent the true fruition of his scholarship; for even as an economist, he was never so much interested in new discoveries or theories as in relating the facts of a modern world to the age-old problems of human conduct and human happiness.
During his administration Yale developed into a great national university. Much of this development was the natural fruition of time, and it is impossible to declare that this step or that in the advance of the university was due to Hadley alone; but those who lived and worked at Yale through that period were keenly aware of his influence, moving steadily in the direction of improved standards, all the way from the graduate school, which grew in importance and vitality throughout his administration, to the freshman year, established as a separate school in his last year as president, with the purpose of furnishing better instruction for incoming students. New enterprises inaugurated during his term of office, including the School of Forestry, the University Press, the Yale Review, and Yale-in China, reflected the highest ideals of the parent institution in scholarship and in public service.
Achievements
Arthur Hadley is famous through his published works: Railroad Transportation, Its History and Laws (1885) and An Account of the Relations between Private Property and Public Welfare (1896). The first book was recognized in Europe by two Russian translations and a French translation that won Hadley a medal at the Paris Exposition in 1889. Through it he was recognized as an expert on transportation, and some of his articles were included in the Ninth and Tenth Editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Hadley's personality, down to the least of his bewildering mannerisms, was already registered on the memories of hundreds of students. The peculiar inflections of his voice, his manner of turning up his eyes as he came to the end of a period and gathered his thoughts for the next, his eccentric gestures, made with one forearm, and often both, swinging loosely from the elbow, became the peculiar delight of Yale gatherings, at first in the undergraduate classrooms and presently at university functions of every sort. The ability to imitate Hadley was enough to give any Yale man a place in the affections of his classmates, and stories told in the Hadley manner became a part of the stock of college tradition. While students and alumni amused themselves with irreverent additions to the Hadley myth, they listened to the man himself with constantly increasing respect, fascinated by the readiness of his wit, charmed by the wealth of his culture, enriched in their own intellectual lives by the example of his broad and philosophic approach to every subject. Whether he was setting the table on a roar at an alumni dinner, or holding the graduating class in rapt, attentive silence by one of his fine baccalaureate addresses, President Hadley could always command the attention of a Yale audience. His attainments were not solely scholastic, however.
Interests
Hadley was one of the best whist and chess players in New Haven, was good at tennis, enjoyed walking and mountain-climbing, was keenly interested in football strategy, and argued that baseball would be a better game if played with ten men. Military strategy fascinated him and he was an authority on the strategic side of Napoleon’s campaigns.
Connections
Hadley married Helen Harrison Morris on June 30, 1891, daughter of Luzon Buritt Morris, who was to become Governor of Connecticut in 1893. They had two sons, Morris and Hamilton, and one daughter, Laura.
